


Same+

by argle_fraster



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: M/M, Triple Triad, i accidentally triple triad fic, i'm not even sorry, things that are not my fault, use your words boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-21
Updated: 2012-09-21
Packaged: 2017-11-14 18:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/pseuds/argle_fraster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Squall and Nida play Triple Triad because apparently it's easier than talking about things.</p>
<p>[September: makeout month, Chocobo Races 2012, Team Ramuh]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Same+

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seventhe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhe/gifts).



> Written for the prompt: I like the idea that Nida's the only person who Squall doesn't instinctively have to act all "Commander" for - at first it's maybe because Nida barely registers on his radar like the other Fated Children do, but Squall doesn't feel like he has to be strong around Nida. He can let little things - like exhaustion, and frustration, and smiles - show that he wouldn't elsewhere. And somehow this ends in makeouts: PLEASE MAKE THE MAGIC HAPPEN. Maybe Squall figures it out first and surprises Nida. Maybe Nida finds Squall's smile unbearably sexy. Maybe they end up making out and the Garden crashes into FH again, who knows. MOUTHS ON MOUTHS PLEASE.

As with most things in Nida's life, it starts with Triple Triad.

On nights when he can't sleep, he usually takes to the control room - or, depending on who you talk to, the Headmaster's former office - to sit with the stars over his shoulders and the familiar ebb and sway of the steering rod at his back. He takes his deck with him and plays some practice matches against himself; it helps with becoming more familiar with cards he just acquired and creating new strategies using unusual combinations. Nida is _good_ at Triple Triad. He likes the way the rules can change the variables and his brain has to catch up quickly, and he likes the way the numbers create something tangible and solid that he can focus on. He's not as good as Xu or Quistis, but they have more analytical minds than he does, and his mom mostly just gave him his father's old deck when he was young so that he'd have something to occupy himself with while she was busy around the house.

It surprises him when he goes to the control room one night and finds Squall already there, sitting on the floor with his elbows propped up on his knees like the weight of the world is resting squarely on his shoulders.

(Sometimes, Nida thinks, it probably is.)

Squall doesn't say anything, so neither does Nida, because he's pretty sure that he's interrupting Squall's _thinking time_ and maybe, by the look of the dejected slope of the commander's shoulders, his _falling apart time_ , but the control room is Nida's domain and he doesn't really feel like leaving, either. He sits down opposite Squall and lets the silence go until it becomes unbearable, and then he pulls out his deck and sets up an easy, no-special rules match against himself (he's a little afraid that Squall's presence will distract him, so he keeps it simple).

He's halfway through before he realizes that Squall is watching him.

"You get that card from the Joker?" Squall asks, and he nods towards Biggs & Wedge when Nida looks up to see what he's talking about.

"Yeah," Nida replies. He's a little thrown. Most people don't know about the Card Club unless they're in it.

Squall doesn't say anything else, but he does sit and watch Nida play for awhile, and when he leaves, Nida realizes the silence stopped feeling overwhelming awhile ago. He doesn't know what to do about it, so he opts for nothing - he figures its best to stick to one's strengths.

A few days later, Squall is back in the control room after curfew again, and this time, he brought his card deck.

Turns out, Squall's kind of a Triple Triad junkie.

\--

They play a lot, because it lets them stay silent without feeling like they are being rudely quiet, and gives them both something to think about that isn't _things they don't want to think about_. Nida isn't sure what demons drive Squall to the controls in the middle of the night, but he assumes they are the usual suspects: Rinoa leaving for Timber, Laguna moving in and out of Garden as assignments call for it, the "orphanage" gang breaking up as they get called up for various tasks outside the confines.

Since it's just the two of them, and they are playing for practice more than anything else, they abolish Balamb's long-standing trade rule between friends. After all, what's the use of getting strategies worked out if you lose one of your key cards?

"Ran out of hot dogs again today," Nida says, as he eyes Squall's Ifrit card with undisguised interest. At least the GF is weak on the bottom flank; it'd be unstoppable otherwise.

Squall snorts. He takes a long moment to look at the board and think. "Alert the media."

Nida is so thrown that Squall made a _joke_ that he completely fumbles his next play and hastily puts down Mini-Mog where he should have used one of his filler cards.

"I don't know," he says, trying to cover his fluster - because it's the _commander_ sitting on the cold floor of the control room with him, bent over a card game, and sometimes he forgets that Squall really is _that_ important. "If you leak it to the papers, President Loire might think it an issue of national security and come in with a shipment straight from Esthar."

He thinks for a moment that he's gone too far, but the corners of Squall's mouth quirk upwards as he completes the board with his Diablos card (ugh, SeeDs and their ability to get the good cards through traveling) and wins handily 6-4.

"In that case, don't you dare breathe a word," Squall says, and the expression on his face as he leaves seems almost _content_.

\--

Garden gets popular again. Cid and Edea come back sans-management just to help with operations, and it throws things into a tizzy; it feels like the old days again, with NORG and the Garden faculty, and it really affects the mood of the place. Nida retreats to his sanctuary more often than not just to escape it all.

When Squall joins him, they up the stakes just to try and get their mind off things, throwing in the Elemental rule. Nida would like to play the folks at Fisherman's Horizon, sometime.

"I don't remember you being at the initiation test at Dollet," Squall comments, sort of off-handedly, as Nida has an unusual lead despite his rather mundane current card set. "I know you were there, but I just.. don't remember."

It seems like he might continue, so Nida stays silent, and when it becomes apparent that Squall won't, he shrugs. "I get that a lot."

"Sorry," Squall says, and looks _sincere_.

(It's still strange, no matter what; that Squall comes _here_ , to play cards, when he can't sleep.)

"No, it's okay," Nida says. He's avoiding the water square on the board so he can keep his attributes. "I mean, it's not, I guess. But it's just normal. I'm pretty easily overlooked."

"Not after what you did for Garden," Squall tells him.

Nida puts down his Cactuar, a neutral play. "People don't remember what I did for Garden."

There's a long stretch of silence and three more cards played. It's a draw, 5-5, despite Squall's deck being a fair cry better with Elemental rules than Nida's own is by nature.

"I do," Squall says, so quiet Nida isn't even sure he heard it.

He's not really sure what to say to that. They play another round in silence, and the score ends up the same.

\--

At one point, they try to bring in an actual table to play on, but sitting at it seems weird and awkward and forced where none of the other nights did, so they abandon it. It's just another one of the things Nida isn't _sure_ about, like why Squall chooses him or this place.

\--

Nida's life is pretty stable in its predictability, but Squall's life takes after his own namesake. There's always something happening that requires his immediate attention, or some problem that gets upgraded instantly to his desk; it seems, after everything with Edea, that people automatically just _assume_ he'll take care of things without really asking, but it isn't Nida's place to say anything about that.

Squall tends to wear the day's stresses in his card deck. On good days, he favors a right-side biased offensive approach with only a few elemental attributes. On bad days, his hand can vary anywhere from completely random to coldly calculated defense with high contrasts on card flanks.

A few months into their strange arrangement, the tension between Balamb and Galbadia gets bad enough that Nida suggests working in the Same rule.

He likes using it - it makes him think through every turn and how each play connects to the others, including Squall's.

Squall's mouth is a grim, thin line the whole first two matches. He wins, but they are pretty ugly wins, and Nida attributes some of them to his own poor handling of the new strategies.

"This isn't really where I wanted to be," Squall admits, as he sets the board up for round three.

Nida is surprised. "Sitting in the control room on regulation pants that probably cost this place more than a few gil playing a children's card game?"

It makes Squall smile: _really_ smile. The kind of smile that spreads slowly and moves every muscle.

"I was going to say beating you senseless at this game," he replies, "so, no, not quite."

"Ouch," Nida says. "You're on, now."

The score ends up even, with Squall taking a killer 7-3 match and Nida evening it out with a slowly-drawn 6-4.

"You meant at Garden, right?" Nida asks, because for some strange reason, he feels like he can. "Being in charge, having people look up to you."

Instead of withdrawing, Squall just looks troubled. "I don't think people should be looking up to me."

"You're a good leader."

Squall shrugs, helpless. "I fumble through it."

"See, that's the thing," Nida tells him, and starts sorting out his cards for another round - he'll stick to his spread with similar integers, in hopes of evoking the chain reaction more. "Everyone does that, it's just that you have people watching when you do. Remember the time Garden accidentally took a few inches off of Balamb's harbor?"

He is rewarded with a smile for that. "Who could forget that?"

"That was me fumbling," Nida says. " _Literally_ , because I couldn't figure out how to get this thing out of reverse after we upgraded the nav-system."

When he finally looks up, Squall is studying him with an unreadable expression.

"You'd be a good leader, too," he says, after a long moment of nothing. "One of those scary, quiet ones that nobody ever sees coming in a fight."

"Pretty sure you wouldn't see me coming in a fight because I'd be headed the other way," Nida points out, but it's nice to hear anyway.

The games are pretty half-hearted for the rest of the night, and it's pleasantly casual.

\--

Laguna visits Garden for an extended stay on "diplomatic" liaisons; Nida and Squall invoke the Plus rule and each turn takes forever with the multitude of aspects to consider with each play.

\--

It isn't until Rinoa pops up again and they start using Combo and Samewall that Nida thinks they've run out of rules to make the matches harder, and there may be a problem. Squall is off all night, his attention elsewhere - he puts down several cards that Nida can't even figure out _how_ he thought were good plays, and Nida's too much a sore loser to not take the opportunity to trounce the other man thoroughly.

"Did you love her?" he asks, as he's setting up the board again, and it's not until the words are out of his mouth that he realizes the gravity of what he's just said.

Squall takes a long, _long_ while to answer. "Yes. No. I don't know. Maybe."

"Do you wish she'd stayed?" Nida asks instead.

"No." That answer is instantaneous and delivered without hesitation. Squall shakes his head, tapping his fingers against the inside of his knee as his gaze slips off into the corner where there used to be a desk and now holds only dust bunnies. "No," he repeats, quieter. "It was the best thing for both of us."

"Still," Nida says. "I'm sorry."

Squall's expression is questioning.

"It just seems like a rough situation," Nida tries, and is aware that he sounds stupid and young and naive (and maybe he _is_ all of those things, but the point still stands).

They play a whole round, a draw, before Squall answers, "It was. It's getting better."

Nida doesn't ask for clarification. If he's being honest, he's a little afraid to know.

\--

They don't play for awhile. It's not even that things get busy, it's just that things are _different_ , and Nida tries playing with the Trepies in the cafeteria for lack of anything better only to find that they are uniformly terrible and their cards are even worse. (He clears them out, anyway.) By the time Squall shows up after-hours again, he's sorely missing having an opponent who can tell a Geezard from a Wendigo.

The other man doesn't really say anything as they play, and Nida's concentration is blown.

"We should play for something," Squall says, suddenly.

"Trade?" Nida asks.

Squall's gaze belays nothing. "No," he replies. "Something the winner gets to choose."

For some reason, this makes Nida's chest tighten; he swallows hard, and hopes that he isn't advertising his strange nerves everywhere. It's difficult to make sure his hands are shaking as he plucks the cards to use from his deck.

"Okay," he says. "Winner gets to choose."

By some bizarre twist of fate, the first three games are draws. Nida can't tell if Squall is amused or frustrated when the man finally wins, a lucky 6-4 end with an elemental combo off the far left wall.

"Well," Nida laughs, anxious and slightly apprehensive, "I guess now you get to pick a prize. And don't ask for driving rights to Garden for a night, you'll never be able to pry this baby out of my-"

That's as far as he gets before Squall cuts him off, leaning across the game board and knocking the stacks of unused cards flying with his knees, finding Nida's mouth with his own. It's not really on center - his aim is a bit off, so maybe _he_ was nervous, too. He catches more of Nida's cheek than lips, but it fixes when Nida turns his head into it. Then Squall is licking his mouth open in the sort of way that might be learned from being in control and having people obey orders, like there is no possibility to argument.

Nida doesn't really want to argue it. He lets Squall coax him open, lets him skim the lines of his teeth and push him backwards onto the ground. It's more a tangled jumble of knees and elbows than anything else, and Nida is reminded that they are on _tiles_ , but the thought is quickly replaced with other things - like the feeling of Squall's fingers against his waist and the way Squall is swallowing his slightly-too-eager groans.

Squall kisses like he's hell-bent on taking Nida apart, and Nida just hopes he plans to put it all back together at the end.

When Squall drags his mouth away from Nida's, letting Nida gasp in something that might be air, there's just the moon above them and the gentle hum of Garden's engines beneath their forms.

"Don't think you won enough games for this," Nida says, as Squall's mouth trails down his neck and finds the lobe of his ear, nipping at it.

"Kept count," Squall replies. "Figured I should store them all up to use at once."

It's probably embarrassing how many times he's won in the past months, and Nida doesn't even _care_. He just curls his fingers around Squall's ears, tangling his hands in the hair that desperately needs a cut, and pulls the man back for another kiss, fully prepared to give as well as he gets.

Maybe his mom was right about Triple Triad, after all. That Same rule really is something.


End file.
